The safari browser lets you add an icon to the home screen as a bookmark to whatever webpage you happen to be on. I would want to do that same thing, but in an app I develop. So basically, the user would launch the app, do a bunch of stuff and somewhere along the way, a web clip would be created and pushed to their home screen (with their consent of course). Is this possible, or is it a feature exclusive to the Safari browser? It seems like this sort of thing could be done, but it also seems like it could be viewed as spam and therefore a reason for Apple to reject the app outright. Is this sort of thing feasible? If so, I would be very thankful for a link on where I could read up on how to go about it.
It seems unlikely that the iOS app security sandbox would allow an app to directly add web pages to the home screen.
Best bet might be to upload the webpage to some site, and then launch Safari with a URL to the webpage on that site, after requesting that the user manually "clip" that site using Safari.
Related
I am interested in developing an app for Facebook, however, I am quite bothered by the sidebar on the right side of the screen. Is there a way to disable it so that users of my app won't see it? I have attached a pic to explain exactly which sidebar I am referring to:
Click here
If you're hosting your app on facebook.com (apps.facebook.com/something) then you don't get to control the entire browser window, just the iframe which contains your app.
If you need full control of the browser, host your app off-facebook.
I'm building an app that uses OpenID for authentication. I'm giving Google, Yahoo and the general OpenID site as options.
At present, when the user selects a site, I open a UIWebView and the user performs their login with that frame, all within the app.
However, it has struck me that when using UIWebView, you cannot easily show to the user that the connection is over https or that they are indeed at the site I'm claiming they are at. I could be easily harvesting passwords.
Would it be, and I'm looking for opinions on this, be better from a user confidence perspective to actually open Safari when the user selects a login and once they've logged in have Safari direct me back to app?
Thanks
Most people using iOS devices are used to the way Facebook logins work; no URL bar, no nothing. I'd just follow the typical workflow. You could bump out to Safari, and return via a custom URL scheme. However, I think users will think that is more weird. iOS users are not used to being jumped in and out of different apps.
just my 2 cents, it would be also faster if the user has already logged in those services with Safari before.
Prompting out a UIWebView and switching to Safari is using the same amount of steps, so why not?
I thought I'd follow up on this thread to say I'm having difficulties getting the app approved and I think it's because I use the Safari approach. I've had it rejected by Apple twice now because:
"Apps that link to external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions to be used in the app, such as a “buy" button that goes to a web site to purchase a digital book, will be rejected "
I think it's because I'm launching Safari. I've opened a dispute with Apple and I'll come back with more information once I hear back from them. I really hope a quick change to a UIWebView will help!
I have an iPhone application with Tabbar. One of the tabs is UIWebView which opens a link to a website in which you can login and do some tasks.
So the question is,
Is it legal to have an iPhone application which allows you to login into website as part of application? I am not quitting the iphone application while visiting the website.
Thanks
DPatel
As far as you don't do any money transactions (i.e. eBay) in the website it is legal. If your intention is to use eBay or something like that inside the webview just open it externally in safari.
Yes. However, if the website allows unfiltered access to the web - ie has a google search, or external links, or a URL bar, note that your app will have to be rated 17+ due to the ability to find adult content on the web. As long as the website only has internal links, you should be fine.
However, Apple does sometimes have a cow about web interfaces not following Apple's UI Design guidelines, so make sure the buttons in your web page are big enough to be finger-touchable.
For example, the following URL shows the app in a tab:
https://www.facebook.com/just.to.get.a.rep?sk=app_203403406338325
But when on a mobile device it redirects to the mobile site and does not show the tab or even have a link to it:
https://m.facebook.com/just.to.get.a.rep?sk=app_203403406338325
I even have the application tab set as the Default Landing Tab for this page, but cannot get the pap to show for the page. Is there another format we need to develop for the App to support mobile? Ideally we would like to show the tab on iPhone app and other mobile viewing.
If you're in control of the link the user clicks on to reach your fanpage/pagetab-combination, then try adding a GET parameter ref=ts
h++ps://www.facebook.com/just.to.get.a.rep?sk=app_203403406338325&ref=ts
Apparently this prevents the redirect to the mobile version of facebook.
There's not currently any way to see App-provided Page tabs on the m.facebook.com site
Mobile web apps are supported, but they're not tied to the Page and need to be manually linked-to or bookmarked, the tab functionality simply doesn't exist now.
Currently you can develop application functions such as app authorisation but sadly no, you can't display standard iFramed tab apps, I suspect this is because of slow 3G data speeds and the fact that Facebook wouldn't want the mobile experience being any slower than it already is (dependent on external hosting etc).
Many of my larger clients are begging for it. The only workaround I use is to build an external page with the same content used in the iFrame - then you can direct users to the tab or mobile users to an external link.
https://www.facebook.com/pagename/app_000000000000000?ref=page_internal
as of now ref=page_internal is working as a work around.
You can redirect Mobile users to a specific mobile website, and have desktop users redirected to your page tab app.
Detailed instructions for doing this are available here:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/15860533/121285
I'm trying to glue information from a web page to an iPhone app that said web page suggests to download. I control both the web page and the downloadable app.
Scenario is like this:
User visits my web page, on which I recognize the user (he may have logged in, and I store his info in a cookie). I then present a link to him to an app in the App Store that he should download for "enhanced experience" of this web service of mine.
Now, when the user launches the downloaded app on his iPhone, I like to re-identify the user who previously visited said web page.
All would be easy if an iPhone app could read Safari's cookies. But it can't.
A somewhat lame solution could be that the web server stores the visitor's IP address and uses that to recognize him once he launches the iPhone app. But that's not reliable.
Another one would be to give the user a token (code) that he needs to remember and then re-enter in the app. Still quite awkward, I think.
Any better suggestions?
Simply put, you can't do this.
One thing you could consider is a custom URL scheme to launch the app. You could send the user an email that uses this custom link. However there's a couple of problems with this:
the user may not have the account that they used to register for your site set up on their iPhone. This might seem unlikely, but say the user signed up for your site 5 years ago with their Hotmail account and they have since switched to Gmail.
it's unlikely that the email would fit into their workflow. They would probably download the app and just launch it by touching the icon instead of clicking a link in a received email.
You could also put the custom URL as a link on your web page, but again, this won't fit into the workflow because they have to go to the App Store app to do the download.
Consider this - if you've got some sort of website that has an authentication step, it's probably a fair bet to say that the user is the type of person who already has an application such as Facebook installed on their iPhone. They are already used to the paradigm of having to enter their credentials into an application despite the fact that they may have already done it in Safari.
If you could read the unique iPhone device ID from javascript on your web page, you could look for that again when the application connected...
But I cannot find any means of reading this from Javascript in Mobile Safari, I thought I'd post in case there is a way now to give you another option to consider.
OK, we found a somewhat working solution: The html code can create a cookie. Later, when the app runs, it can't directly read that cookie, of course (due to the sandboxing of iPhone apps). However, it can connect to the server, then open a http URL pointing to the server and including a unique token that it has gotten from the server beforehand. This leads to launching Safari, accessing the server. The server can now read the aforementioned cookie and finally establish the connection with the help of the token.
Just stumbled over this question and I'm curious if you thought about using a UIWebView.
Where the question is - does UIWebView share cookies with safari?
If it does the rest should be easy.
UIWebView's DON'T share cookies with Safari. So unfortunately that is not an option.